No, Modi Government Hasn’t Slashed Funds for Higher Education
The data given in the viral post in inaccurate for both 2009 and 2019.
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CLAIM
A Facebook post, which says that the budget for Higher Education has been reduced in 2019, has gone viral. According to the post, the budget for Higher Education was Rs 2,900 crore in 2009, while in 2019, the amount budgeted is Rs 400 crore.
The post had over 600 likes and over 360 shares at the time this article was written. Many others had also shared the same figures on Facebook with the same claim.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
The Quint checked the budget allocated to higher education under the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) to find out if the funds have indeed been slashed.
We looked at the data from 2008-2009, 2009-2010 and 2018-2019, 2019-2020, due to the ambiguous claim that doesn’t mention the financial year it has taken into consideration.
According to the data on the Indian Union Budget website, the amount budgeted by the Union government for higher education for financial year 2008-2009 was Rs 10,852.87 crore. Similarly, the budgeted amount for 2009-2010 was Rs 15,429.00 crore.
Similarly, the budget allocated to higher education in the union budget of 2018-2019 was Rs 35,010.29 crore while in 2019-2010 Rs 38,317.01 crore.
Clearly, the figures that appear in the viral post are incorrect and misleading for both 2009 and 2019.
SO WHERE DOES THE RS 400 CRORE FIGURE COME FROM?
The Quint dug a little deeper to find out where the Rs 400 crore figure came from, and we found out that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech had proposed that Rs 400 crore be provided under “World Class institutions” for financial year 2019-2020.
She also added that India has become a “hub of higher education” and proposed to start a “Study in India” programme that will focus on bringing foreign students to Indian institutions. education institutions in FY20.
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